---

With joy in my heart i will say good day to my fellow steemain, it is a great opportunity to learn from my dear prof. @imagen again. In fulfilment of the teaching i will be attempting the given assignment, and I know it will be of great interest to you.

Source

HOMEWORK

1. How many times have bitcoin been halved? When is the next expected? What is the current amount that bitcoin miners receive? Mention at least two cryptocurrencies that are or have halved.
2. What are consensus mechanism? How do proof of work and proof of work staking differ?
3. Enter the bitcoin explorer and indicate the hash corresponding with the last transaction. Show screenshot.
4. What is meant by altcoin season! Are we currently in altcoin season? When was the last altcoin season? Mention and show 2 charts of altcoins followed by their growth in the most recent season. Give reasons for your answer
5. Make a purchase from your verified account of the exchange of your choice of at least 15 USD in a currency that is not in the top 25 of coinmarket (SBD, tron or steem are not allowed) why did you choose this coin? What is the goal or purpose behind the project? Who are its founders/developers? Indicate the currency's ATH and its current price. Reason for your answers. Show screenshots.

INTRODUCTION

---

Source

What is bitcoin trajectory? The word "TRAJECTORY" means the course a body travels during its movement.
Therefore, bitcoin trajectory is the path of bithcoin from its listing up on till now and beyond (the future).
Taking a look from the bitcoin genesis block to where it is now, and what the future of bitcoin looks like, you will believe with me that bitcoin has a very bright path.
In this assignment, i will be looking at the
i. Point and occurrence of bitcoin halving.
ii. Concensus mechanism.
iii. Bitcoin explorer.
iv. Altcoins.

QUESTION 1

---

How many times have bitcoin been halved? When is the next expected? What is the current amount that bitcoin miners receive? Mention at least 2 cryptocurrencies that are or have halved.

The above question is a very interesting one, but before I talk on it, I will like to establish briefly in the heart of my readers what bitcoin is all about.

What is bitcoin?

---

Bitcoin is a computer/digital currency introduced in to the trading market for the purpose of buying and selling of assets.
Due to its decentralized nature, bitcoin is under control of no central government neither does it give room for a middle man inform of bank or any institution.

Although cryptography had been existing and cryptocurrency was a floating topic, the idea of bitcoin was brought about by an unidentified individual by the name "SATOSHI NAKAMOTO" in the year 2009 (although the whitepaper was written in 2008).
Bitcoin rose to $1 by the end of 2009 and by 2011 there was a high percentage increase that took bitcoin from $1 to $32.
Volatility and market movement brought about flunctuation in bitcoin market but bitcoin having strong investors moved from $220 as at April 2013 to $1156 by December 2013.
In the year 2015 there was a decline in bitcoin market bringing it down to $315 and the beginning of the year, then in 2017 bitcoin spiked from $1,000 to $20,089 which brought about its firm.

Bitcoin like other currencies during its developmental stage was halved in the sense that the miners rewards were reduced in order to remove subsidy in the bitcoin market.

Bitcoin halving was strategically scheduled to hold every four years and by calculation, bitcoin have been halved trice since 2009.
Bitcoin halving belimps to 210,000 blocks reduced by 50% in each block.
On the 28 of november 2012 roughly 10,500,000 was mined at 50 BTC, marking the first bitcoin halving recorded.
The second bitcoin halving recorded was on the 9th of july 2016 at 25 BTC.
This year this latest bitcoin halving occur on the 11 of may at 12.5 BTC marking bitcoin third halving. Next expected bitcoin halving should be in four years time at 6.25 BTC following halving speed.

Bitcoin miners are expected to earn/receive a minimum of 6.25 BTC for any successfully added block.
Currently, miners should be rewarded $300,000.25 which is virtually 6.25 BTC

Apart from bitcoin, there are over 15 coins that have halved successfully they include;

• Bitcoin satishi's vision (BSV)
• Bitcoin cash (BCH)
• Litecoin (LTC)
• Dash (DASH)
• Bitcoin gold (BCG)
• Bitcoin diamond (BCD)
• Raven (RVN)

Below is a table that shows details about the above listed coins

QUESTION 2

---

What are consensus mechanisms? How do proof-of-work and proof-of-staking differ?

Consensus mechanism is a fail-safe algorithm used in blockchain to validate changes at any given time among members of the network, by members of the network or delegated "nodes".

Consensus mechanism can be taken to be a way by which law or principles are made on a blockchain network by members of the network.

The most known and commonly used consensus mechanisms are;

• Proof-of-work (PoW)
• proof-of-stake (PoS)

PROOF OF WORK (PoW)

---

PoW was the first blockchain concensus mechanism. It is the consensus algorithm used on the bitcoin network. It operates to secure cryptocurrencies and also regulate printing and mining of new coins, miners compete to be the first to solve hashes using their computer power, the winner is allowed to create the next block and receive mining rewards.
PoW worked is the consensus mechanism used on bitcoin blockchain, however it is not ecofriendly and better algorithm are being developed daily to replace it.

PROOF OF STAKE (PoS)

---

As the name implies, in PoS, blocks are confirmed by validators, and the validators authority on the blockchain is based on the amount of a particular validator has as stake in the network. That is to say, the higher the amount of cryptocurrency the a miner possesses in a network the higher the hashing ability of the validator.
One among the different blockchains this mechanism runs on is cadano blockchain.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PoW AND PoS

---

For easy understanding, I will be using a table to present the difference between PoW and PoS.

PoW	PoS
1. PoW demands a great amount of computation	PoS does not require many computers
2. PoW are connected to miners and are secured by them	PoS are connected to to validators because they control the blockchain
3. In PoW, there is a high level of energy consumption due to the great level of computation	There is a minimal use of energy in PoS.
4 PoW is fully decentralized	due to the fact that validators control and protect transactions on PoS it is not totally decentralized.
5. PoW can be found in BTC, eth, BCH	PoS can be found on Tron, Cardano, etc

QUESTION 3

---

Enter the Bitcoin explorer and enter the hash corresponding to the last transaction. Show screenshot.

To answer the above question, i will be navigating https://www.blockchain.com/ following the below steps.

STEP 1

On my browser i will search for https://www.blockchain.com/

The above is what the home page of https://www.blockchain.com/ looks like

STEP 2

For me to successfully explore bitcoin explorer, I will use the menu at the top right of the site to navigate the explorer

Haven done this, the next page provides us with the full information we need, which include lastes transaction, the block, etc

I will be using the latest transaction to derive other details.

From the picture above, the followijg can be derived

• Hash: 298e5fca035ee5da89e8f01124a36f5acd18b3d756f5bdb8154b55ad5c0d3b52
• Received time: 2021-10-09 10:02
• Status of transaction: confirmed
• Amount sent: 0.00326000 BTC
• Value: $177.26

QUESTION 4

What is meant by altcoin season? Are we currently in Altcoin season? When was the last Altcoin season? Mention and show 2 Altcoins. Followed by their growth in the most recent season. Give reasons for your answer.

Altcoins is the abbreviation for alternative coins, altcoins are literaly other coins apart from bitcoin and shitcoins.
Altcoin season simply put is that period in crypto market where alternative coins make more percentage increase than bitcoin or when altcoins are leading bitcoin in the market

Source

Source
the above image shows bitcoin and altcoin index in the last 30days.

As regards the question about the season we are in, I wont say we are in altcoin season reason being that if we are in altcoin season,75% of the top 50 coins are meant to perform better than bitcoin but only 8 altcoins performed better than bitcoin in the last 30 days.
Check the picture below

Source

The last recorded occurence of altcoin dominance was between december 2017 and january 2018 but around December 2020 bitcoin regained its ground up till date.

*src

The above picture shows a flowchart of altcoins. ltcoins peaked in 2017-18 and have not shown such dominance since, although with BTC's decreasing dominance, this is certain to happen again in no distant future and have longer effect.

QUESTION 5

---

Make a purchase from your verified account of any exchange of your choice of at least 15 USD in a currency that is not in the top 25 of coinmarket (SBD, tron or steem are not allowed). Why did you choose this coin? What is the goal or purpose behind this project? Who are the founders/developers? Indicate the current price. Reason for your answers. Show screenshots.

Carrying out the above assignment, i will be using my. Below is a proof of what I mean

from binance

Below is my binance wallet showing my coin and the amount of usdt i have for the trade I want to place.

from binance

I have 21 USDT and i will be purchasing Fantom (FTM)

From binance
I will place a trade to buy 17$ worth of FTM by clicking buy on the order page

The major reasons i prefer FTM is its good blockchain, low supply and currently undervalued marketcap. Some data from FTM;

24-hour trading volume of Fantom is $2,144,319,125 USD.
The current CoinMarketCap ranking is #35.
Live market cap of $5,609,030,527 USD.
It has a circulating supply of 2,545,006,273 FTM coins.
Max. supply of 3,175,000,000 FTM coins.
FTM have a use case of "SMART MEDICINE". So, if FTM should be accepted fully as means of payment in hospitals it will to a great extent it will help FTM grow and do better.

The above pictures are gotten from coinmarket.

About the founder of FTM
The name of the founder of Fantom is Dr. Ahn Byung Ik a South Korean computer scientist. This was made possible by his team which include;

• Andre Cronje
• David Richardson
• Samuel Harcourt
• Simone Pomposi
• Jakub Stepanik
• Quan Nguyen
• Fred Pucci
  The platform's current CEO is Michael Kong.

Source
Regarding FTM all time high,(ATH) and the current price
All time high: $2.45
Current price: $2.18

Source

CONCLUSION

---

Bitcoin is the pioneer and the King of cryptocurrencies, however, many altcoins are showing promise and coming into the scene, making a strong statement. The decreasing dominance can be attributed to the fact that the world is moving towards more eco-friendly blockchains and the slow transaction speed bitcoin unfortunately possesses doesn't help. Also the problem of high cost of trading fees, and low utility is there.

In the next decade, I predict a change in dominance and more altcoin dominance than bitcoin. A lot of new blockchains are showing promise and are competing amongst each other to assert dominance, and steem is not left out. This should be an interesting turn of events to watch